Tumbling

by Caela Carter

  “Let them have their moment,” Ted had said.

  Monica had risked turning her head at that point, looking at their table, and she’d felt a little sorry for Grace. She sat sandwiched between her father and brother. There was no one else. The other side of the table was filled with the spillover from Leigh’s entourage. There was no mother. No extended family. No one to feel proud of Grace in the way her brother couldn’t and her father wouldn’t.

  Monica had known Grace’s mother wasn’t around. She knew Grace’s life wasn’t stuffed with family the way her own was. But it was different to see it. Grace looked empty.

  Monica’s heart almost broke for her. Until she heard her say, “Well, you’d better not expect me to start treating her like some A-lister just because she beat Kelly Moss.”

  Ted had actually chuckled. He probably thought Monica couldn’t hear over the racket her family was making. But she could. Ted said: “You know what I say. There are no friends on the gym floor.”

  It was a twisted moment for a family to laugh, but they did.

  • • •

  Now that Monica was at the Olympic trials, stretching and waving at camera after camera, she was glad she’d seen how Grace’s family worked. She was glad she knew that Grace’s life was contorted, so that she could force herself not to take it personally, when Grace was clearly trying to sabotage her for no good reason. She wasn’t Grace’s competition.

  “I don’t know what she’s doing here,” Grace said to Leigh, barely pretending to whisper. “I’d never show up to a meet that I was sure to lose.”

  Leigh laughed. “Yeah,” she said, a little quieter, but still loud enough for Monica to hear without straining. “She’s in the way.”

  Monica couldn’t possibly be doing well enough to make Grace and Leigh alarmed, could she?

  Don’t look at the scoreboard.

  Why were Leigh and Grace doing this?

  Monica shifted into a split. Don’t look. She swung her arms across her chest, back and forth, back and forth, trying to get her blood pumping. She hated that she’d missed her quiet time.

  “Whatever,” she heard Grace say. “I’m sure Monica Chase is about to screw up on vault. She’s due for a fall.”

  Monica squished her eyes shut, trying to eradicate the image of her falling over the vault from her brain. Don’t fall. It’s your only goal: don’t fall. Yet another camera caught her funny face.

  She grabbed for her phone in the bag next to her knee. Her fan page was less dangerous than the scoreboard.

  She opened it up, looked at her interactions, and . . . nothing. Not a word from anyone. She was a gymnast in complete anonymity.

  Why were they trying to tear her down? What had she done?

  And why was she letting them get to her like this? She wasn’t even trying to beat them. Don’t fall. Don’t fall. Don’t fall.

  “She’ll fall,” Leigh said, so loudly. “But I hate that she’s beating me now.”

  Monica stood, keeping her eyes on the vault. She threw her phone back in her bag.

  She would not believe it. They were only trying to make her look, trying to mess with her head. After all, Ted, who said the scoreboard was their enemy, was Grace’s coach, too.

  She could not be three rotations in and still ahead of the national champion.

  Monica’s eyes narrowly missed the scoreboard. She sprinted down the runway, warming up.

  She hopped up on the vaulting table and practiced the end of her vault.

  Just don’t fall, Monica told herself. Nothing else matters.

  Monica watched Kristin jump off the podium and confer with her coach. She felt Grace and Leigh disappear from behind her. Finally.

  Everyone was whispering with her own coach. Everyone except Monica, whose coach was across the gym where Grace had gone. Monica got down off the podium and stared at her fingers. She would not look at the board.

  By the end of this rotation, she’d fall back a few slots anyway, if she was beating anyone to begin with. Most of the best gymnasts did an Amanar on vault, which scored megapoints compared to Monica’s double twisting Yurchenko.

  Monica blinked hard, willing her eyes to stay open, her blood to speed up, as Kristin climbed the stairs beside the vaulting runway. The announcer called Kristin’s name. Monica watched her friend nervously stretch her shoulders while her coach whispered a stream of words into her ear. Monica would make herself cheer. Kristin was counting on being alternate. And there were three. They could both be alternates.

  “Go, Kristin,” Monica finally got herself to yell.

  By the time the words left her mouth, Kristin was already upside down with her hands on the vaulting table. Monica watched as she launched herself skyward, twisted once, twice, then—what? She landed. Kristin put her feet on the ground, took a huge hop forward, and raised her arms to signal to the judges that she was finished.

  Even though she wasn’t. She shouldn’t be finished. She’d missed an entire half twist.

  Monica’s jaw hung open. Kristin had not done the Amanar. She’d done a DTY. She must be having a terrible day. She’d done the same vault Monica would do.

  Natalie was next—a planned DTY.

  It was possible that Monica’s name was ahead of theirs. That she was beating at least two people. It was possible she still would be at the end of the day.

  Ted was nowhere around when Monica’s name rang across the gym floor for the last time that day.

  Could she be beating Kristin? (Could she be beating Leigh, too?) Could she use this rotation to pull even farther ahead?

  Don’t look, Monica told herself one last time. She climbed the podium stairs with her eyes on her toenails.

  But, when she was standing in the chalk, she lost the battle. Before she knew it, her eyes found the scoreboard and scrolled up for her name.

  Not ninth.

  Or eighth.

  Not seventh, sixth, fifth.

  Oh yes, she was beating Kristin. And Annie. And Natalie. And Leigh. Leigh.

  Fourth.

  Fourth. Right after third.

  She felt her heart stop. It climbed slowly to her throat, threatening to choke her.

  Monica was deep in we-at-least-have-to-talk-about-naming-her-to-the-team territory.

  She tried to clear her brain and forced more adrenaline into her muscles. They needed to work like springs. She stood with her toes lined up at the end of the runway. She tried to chase the image of the scoreboard, of the number four far from her brain and to think instead about landing her DTY.

  And ten seconds later, when her too-close-to-bare ass slapped against the blue gym mat, when the meet of her life slipped away from her because of one crooked landing on her left foot, when she did exactly what Leigh and Grace predicted, when she fell, Monica cursed herself for ever looking.

  Not because she believed in bad luck or karma. Not because she thought remaining clueless would somehow have changed her vault.

  But because, even though she’d still be beating someone at the end of the day today, even though she’d still end the day ahead of multiple gymnasts, that wouldn’t be enough anymore.

  And it was all because Grace made her look at the score.

  CAMILLE

  “Comeback Cammie! Comeback Cammie!” It pulsed through the stadium right after the announcer called her name. But, to Camille, it sounded more like a plea than a cheer. Come back, Cammie? Come back, Cammie?

  She was back, right? She was here, in the Baltimore Metroplex, at the Olympic trials, climbing the stairs to the floor and preparing to flip and twist and stun and awe for the second time that day like her mother wanted, like her sixteen-year-old self had been itching to, like she would need to do to make the Olympic team.

  So she was back. Right?

  • • •

  After Camille had sp
ent what was supposed to be her Olympic summer recuperating, attending physical therapy, eating pizza and ice cream and the first candy bar since her bat mitzvah, she had insisted on going to actual high school for her senior year.

  At first it was scary at the public school, so different from the solitary room with one table and one computer where she’d done her schooling over the Internet since the sixth grade. Camille was short and skinny at the start of the year, constantly knocked around by backpacks and elbows in the hallway, completely overwhelmed by the number of new faces and voices and names that she was expected to learn almost immediately. Seven different teachers. Two lab partners. Four people in her group project in English class. The six girls who invited her to sit with them at lunch. Then there were the students who it seemed like everyone knew because they were popular or unpopular or had some distinct feature like being in a wheelchair or being extremely tall. All of these people had lived in Camille’s Long Island neighborhood for most of her life. All of them had histories that intersected and meshed; they were shaped by the story of their neighborhood and even their country, and they were not shaped at all by the specific history that had endless influence in Camille’s own identity.

  During the first few days of school, Camille watched in awe as girls her own age walked the hallways in bodies that made them look like full-grown women. She marveled at the way they interacted with ease and committed their hearts to other things almost as passionately as Camille had once committed to gymnastics: concert choir or cross-country or school. Some of them seemed disproportionately dedicated to things Camille considered frivolous—fashion or religion or social life.

  The first few days were enough to distract Camille from the ache. The yearning for gymnastics. The need to be upside down.

  Camille barely spoke to anyone who was not a teacher. She did what she was told, then went home and stared at the television while all the things she’d seen and heard and smelled that day ran on repeat through her head.

  But, too soon, the ache returned.

  Before walking home from school one day, Camille had gone back to her English classroom for a notebook she’d left by accident. She’d paused at the doorway because, inside, four girls were standing in a circle, singing softly in harmony with their eyes closed. Camille held her breath and watched, her heart almost still. They were so happy, so precise. They were so sure of who they were at that moment. They were like she used to be.

  Their voices faded out and their eyes opened and Camille realized that they had all found her, the short and skinny girl standing in the doorway, watching them dive headfirst into a passion that wouldn’t break their backs.

  “Um. Sorry,” Camille had stammered. “I was . . . I forgot my notebook.”

  They all smiled and the tall, redheaded one said, “Do you sing? We’re trying to start an all-girls a cappella group and we need more members.”

  Camille shook her head and scurried to the back of the room to retrieve her notebook. A minute later she stood in the hallway with her back against the lockers, sucking in air like she’d just dismounted from the uneven bars.

  She had a choice but it wasn’t much of one. She’d have to go back to gymnastics and risk her life the way the doctor had explained. Or she’d have to live the rest of her days with a hole in her heart.

  “You’re not gonna cry, are you?”

  Her head whipped to the side. A boy stood next to her. He was a full head taller than her, with curly brown hair and a face full of freckles. He wasn’t that cute, at least she didn’t think so right away, but Camille felt her personality shrink anyway. She’d barely ever spoken to boys in her life.

  She shook her head.

  “Good,” he’d said. “I can’t stand when girls cry.”

  Camille worked on evening out her breathing. She wondered if it was okay for her to walk away or if that would be rude.

  “Ya just got dumped, didn’t ya? Freshmen boys can be so stupid.”

  Camille shook her head again.

  “Get cut from the freshmen play?” he’d guessed.

  Camille made herself look at him. “I’m a senior,” she’d whispered.

  He’d smiled and it transformed his face. Suddenly he was adorable. Camille felt her cheeks turn pink.

  “Oh, come on,” he’d said. “I know all the seniors.”

  Camille smiled in spite of herself. “I’m new,” she said.

  “Gymnastics girl,” he’d whispered, nodding his head. “I’ve heard about you.”

  Camille felt blood rush to her ears. What had he heard?

  “Do you want to go get some pizza?” he’d asked. “I’ll give you the lowdown on this boring school.”

  Camille had smiled.

  By the end of the week they were dating. By the end of the year, they were inseparable.

  It was Bobby who made it possible for Camille to sort through those six months without the gym. With his help, she built herself up from the inside while she stretched from an under-five-foot-and-under-eighty-pound girl into a woman of five feet and one inch with breasts and hips. It was Bobby who convinced her that gymnastics was a choice, that it had always been a choice, that she could still be herself—the same exact girl—if she was choosing something else.

  But Bobby was wrong, and when Camille had believed him, so was she.

  • • •

  Still, Camille thought as she performed across the floor, it is as impossible to imagine life without Bobby as it had been to imagine life without gymnastics. She’d survived without gymnastics. She’d maybe even been happier without it, at least without it the way it was now. But when she met Bobby, she had been a completely different person. Different height. Different weight. Different voice. Virgin.

  Could she survive without Bobby now?

  Camille stumbled on a landing and barely noticed it. She should be thinking about her floor routine. She shouldn’t be thinking about her breakup. But it didn’t matter how Camille performed on floor. At least not to her mother or her coach or Katja. She was bound to be an Olympian only because of her vault. The floor routine was just for her.

  She’d insisted on continuing to train on floor. She’d needed some part of her workout to be about the joy of the gym and not about her mother’s dream of gold medals in their living room.

  Yet with all of these people watching, she couldn’t enjoy it.

  Camille dismounted her routine and tried not to hear the chant as it boomed back down on her. She tried to push it away from her brain.

  Because she wasn’t who they said she was. She wasn’t Comeback Cammie. She hadn’t come back. She’d made herself new.

  If the fire in your eyes like Wilhelmina’s was what got you to the Olympics, then Camille wouldn’t be so close to going. Someone with more fire would be able to beat her on vault. But that wasn’t the way it was. Talent lit up your gymnastics regardless of fire.

  It wasn’t Camille’s fault if she went to Rome and was miserable while Wilhelmina stayed home and was also miserable.

  Camille halfheartedly saluted the judges and made her way to the stairs of the podium. A number, a score, rang through the stadium. And it wasn’t hers. Camille froze on the podium stairs and turned toward the vault.

  Because that was interesting.

  There was nothing she could do to get herself out of this gymnast destiny, but maybe there was something someone else could do. Hope filled Camille’s veins in a way it hadn’t since the last trials four years ago.

  Leigh Becker had changed the game.

  WILHELMINA

  Wilhelmina stood slack jawed and watched from one hundred feet away as Leigh celebrated with her coach. Leigh bounced on her perky toes, her perky ponytail swinging behind her head, her perky teeth practically glittering in the gym lights as she smiled that huge, huge smile.

  Wilhelmina could almost hear the televisio
ns in the homes of gymnastics fans everywhere. “And Leigh Becker makes gymnastics history by landing the first triple twisting Yurchenko! Three full twists in the air! An entire half twist more than Camille Abrams! The first time it’s been landed in competition.”

  The applause in the stadium was deafening.

  The end. That’s what the applause said to her.

  Wilhelmina had done what she’d sworn she wouldn’t. She’d peeked at the score. Before Leigh’s vault, she had been in third place. Now she would certainly be shoved to fourth.

  Fourth had been her goal, but now she was pretty sure Katja wouldn’t take her if she was in fourth.

  Also, the best Wilhelmina would be able to do was third on vault because Camille was always going to beat her and now Leigh would, too. Wilhelmina and her calculator had been banking on second for vault. She’d never seen Leigh do a vault that could come close to outscoring hers before. From the way Leigh was squealing and dancing on the sidelines, it was clear Leigh hadn’t seen herself do one like that, either.

  Leigh would climb ahead of Wilhelmina this rotation.

  Wilhelmina knew Leigh didn’t blow the entire vaulting competition out of the water just to slash her own personal dreams of Olympic glory. But it felt like an assault.

  It seemed impossible that Leigh or Grace or Georgette or Camille or anyone could want this dream as badly as Wilhelmina did herself. She wanted it more than anyone. And she had worked the hardest and for the longest. That was a fact. If effort and desire were what counted, Wilhelmina deserved this the most.

  But Wilhelmina was being cast out of Olympic Village and into Alternate-ville. A land she didn’t think she could stomach after years of seeing those five rings every time she closed her eyes.

  Her parents and Davion and Kerry would never understand it, but she had made her decision: Wilhelmina was either competing in the Olympics, or she was done with gymnastics.

  And if Camille was right, Katja would easily pick Maria or Annie or someone instead of her.

  So, unless she managed to catch Grace or Georgette, she was done. Thanks a lot, Leigh.